1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to hardwood flooring. In particular, it relates to interlocking prefabricated hardwood flooring panels that have multiple hardwood strips secured to a substrate, and a method of installing the prefabricated hardwood floor panels with adjacent hardwood floor panels.
2. Background Art
A wide variety of flooring materials are available for use in residential and commercial applications. Hardwood floors are a popular method of providing a decorative and long-lasting floor surface. While hardwood floors have several advantages due to their durability and natural beauty, they also have several disadvantages. For example, the hardwood strips used to fabricate a hardwood floor are expensive due to the cost of the hardwood. In addition, hardwood floors require a skilled craftsman to install the floor. As a result, the combined cost of the materials and the labor are relatively high. The high cost of installing a hardwood floor has in turn discouraged many people from selecting this type of flooring.
Attempts have been made to provide the esthetic look of hardwood floors without the associated costs. One method has been to provide a surface covering that has a relatively thin veneer of hardwood which is attached to a substrate. This type flooring, while providing the appearance of a hardwood floor, has several disadvantages. First, the thin veneer is not as durable as a real hardwood floor surface is. It is more susceptible to damage from normal use than the thicker strips used in a real hardwood floor. It is more difficult to repair and cannot be sanded in the same manner as a real hardwood floor. As a result, while flooring made from hardwood veneers resembles hardwood flooring, it is more susceptible to damage, is difficult to repair, and sanding cannot be done without risking damage to the veneer. Due to these factors, veneers have a relatively short life span and will have to be replaced much sooner than a real hardwood floor. Hardwood flooring, on the other hand, will last for the life of the building, can be repeatedly sanded, and is less susceptible to damage. Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method of installing real hardwood flooring that would allow it to be installed inexpensively such tat more individuals could enjoy its benefits.
Another disadvantage of veneers is that due to its thin structure, it cannot be readily stained from one color to another. Real hardwood flooring allows the owner to stain the floor or sand the floor to change the floor's color or merely to remove blemishes.
Another major disadvantage to hardwood veneer flooring is that it is made in rectangular panels. When the rectangular panels are installed, the seams that are formed when the rectangular panels are installed adjacent to another are very visible and make it very obvious that floor has been covered with panels rather than with real hardwood. It would be desirable to have a hardwood flooring systems that can be installed without having straight seams that detract from the appearance of the floor.
Labor cost is another disadvantage associated with real hardwood flooring. While rectangular veneer panels can be easily installed by an unskilled worker, strips of real hardwood require skill to install. The skilled labor cost greatly increases the total cost of installing a real hardwood floor. It would be desirable to have method installing real hardwood floors that would allow unskilled workers to install the floor, or even allow the owner to install floor without using a laborer.
Another disadvantage of installing real hardwood floors is that the individual strips of hardwood will vary and the skill of the installer will also vary. These variances result in imperfections in the finished floor. For example, the seam between adjoining strips of hardwood may be larger than desirable and provide a place for dirt to collect. It would be desirable to have a real hardwood flooring system that minimized the size of the seam such that most desirable surface appearance would be produced.
In addition to a plain hardwood floor in which all of the hardwood strips are similar, many hardwood floors use floor strips of hardwood which vary in color or grain pattern to floor specific designs or floor treatments. For example, darker or lighter woods may be used to create a border around the edge of the floor or to create patterns or images at various locations on the floor. It would be desirable to have a flooring system that would allow designs or borders to be easily installed in a real hardwood floor.
While addressing the basic desirability of using hardwood floors, the prior art has failed to provide a method installing hardwood floors which is inexpensive to manufacture, requires a minimum level of skill to install, and minimizes imperfections in the finish flooring that are the result of installation errors. The prior art has also failed to provide an easy to use method of installing decorative features such as borders or designs in hardwood floors.